City of Secrets

by Mary Hoffman

  ‘It’s so good to see you again,’ he said, giving the older boy another hug when they dismounted at Silvia’s house. Luciano kept a groom but Cesare insisted on looking after his own mare and settling her with food and drink before going in to dine with Luciano.

  ‘How do you like it in Padavia?’ asked Luciano, as they ate Alfredo’s rich bean soup.

  ‘Well enough,’ said Cesare. ‘But I’m sharing a house with four other students. We pay a woman to cook for us but she’s not as good as Alfredo.’

  Luciano felt guilty about having a whole house to himself and several servants but he thrust the thought down. He had never expected to be rich in his old world and it was a bit awkward finding that he was quite wealthy in Bellezza and had to keep up the way of life of a future duke. Cesare lived in Remora with his father, the Horsemaster of the Ram, who was also a Stravagante, and a large family of young half-siblings. He wondered how long the silver that Georgia had given Cesare after she had won the Stellata would last.

  ‘How is Georgia?’ asked Cesare, echoing his thoughts. ‘Have you heard anything about your old world lately?’

  ‘Well,’ said Luciano. ‘I hadn’t had any news for some time but a new Stravagante has just arrived in Padavia. He goes to the same school as Georgia and Falco – though he’s called Nick in their world. This one’s called Matt, Matteo.

  ‘But that’s fantastic,’ said Cesare, his broad, friendly face shining with pleasure. ‘Can I meet him? He could tell us all about Georgia and take her a message!’

  ‘He has met her, and Nick too,’ admitted Luciano. ‘But they weren’t friends until Matt found his talisman. Now they’ve realised that he’s a Stravagante like them.’

  ‘And who is his Stravagante here in the city?’ asked Cesare, quick to understand.

  ‘It’s Professor Constantin,’ said Luciano, looking round him and lowering his voice, even though there was no one to overhear him. ‘You know, the Rhetoric Professor. But keep that to yourself. Even in an independent city like Padavia it’s best we don’t speak about it publicly. The di Chimici are still on the warpath.’

  Matt didn’t see Ayesha till lunchtime. He got to the cafeteria late and there she was, sitting at their usual table. The smile she gave him when he put his tray down was just as radiant as usual but he thought her eyes looked tired, as if she had had no more sleep than him.

  ‘Finally,’ he said, as if he’d been looking for her all morning, instead of trying to avoid her. ‘I got your text.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Can we talk now?’

  But just then a bunch of other sixth formers sat down at the table; Barnsbury’s cafeteria wasn’t exactly the best place for a heart to heart.

  Matt smiled ruefully. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday. I’ve got some . . . well, some stuff going on.’

  ‘With people in the year above?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s sort of to do with going to university,’ he improvised. ‘Getting advice and all that.’

  ‘But that’s great,’ said Ayesha. ‘There’s no need to feel shy about it.’ She didn’t say anything about the fact that Sky was going to art college and Georgia and Alice were applying to read English and that these were unlikely subjects for Matt to be interested in. She was just glad that he was talking to her. And looking at her as if she were the most precious thing in the world. She squeezed his hand.

  ‘Are we all right?’ he dared to ask.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  Matt grinned. ‘I’ve got my first driving lesson tonight.’

  ‘That’s brilliant. I can’t wait till you get your car.’

  ‘Well I’ve got to beat you to it,’ he said, aware that she would be seventeen by Christmas and able to have her own driving lessons. Jago, needless to say, had passed his test first time and had a red Audi that girls seemed to like. Matt was determined to get something less pretentious.

  As though conjured up by this thought, Jago sauntered into the cafeteria, as if he owned it. He was surrounded by a group of friends, and among them was the boy with dreadlocks.

  ‘Hey,’ said Sky casually as he passed by the table. ‘All right, Matt?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Matt. ‘I was just telling Ayesha about how you and the others are helping me decide about uni. Ayesha, this is Sky,’ he added.

  ‘I know,’ said Ayesha. ‘You do Art, don’t you?’

  ‘And English and History,’ offered Sky, wondering what exactly Matt had told her. ‘But I’m going to study in the States for a while.’

  ‘I could never afford that,’ said Matt.

  ‘My old man’s paying,’ said Sky.

  ‘I don’t think I can swing that one on Andy,’ said Matt. ‘Not on a singer’s wages.’ He mentally kicked himself for giving that away so easily but Sky just gave him a curious look.

  ‘My dad’s a singer too,’ he said quietly. ‘Georgia and Alice are trying for Cambridge,’ he added, to change the subject.

  ‘Is that what you want?’ Ayesha asked Matt, surprised.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Not in English though, obviously. But they’re pretty hot on IT there. I should think about it.’

  Matt had no idea what he was saying. He just wanted to keep his girlfriend happy and not have to try to explain to her about Talia and magic and stravagation.

  Luciano and Cesare talked late into the evening and consumed a lot of Bellezzan red wine from the stocks Alfredo had brought with him. The Remoran had heard some of what had passed in Giglia in the spring, but Luciano had to tell it all again in detail.

  ‘And you really killed the Duke?’ asked Cesare. ‘Gaetano must have been a good teacher.’

  ‘He was,’ said Luciano. ‘But that’s not why.’ He stopped, not wanting to talk about it. ‘I’m going to enrol in the School of Fencing here,’ he said. ‘To keep up my practice. You should come with me.’

  ‘I will,’ said Cesare, awkwardly pulling his short sword out of its scabbard. ‘I could do with some lessons or this will just be an ornament. But then you must enrol in the School of Riding with me. We don’t want you to get rusty.’

  ‘OK,’ said Luciano. ‘It’s a deal. Fencing and Riding – that should be a bit livelier than studying Rhetoric!’

  ‘But it can’t be so bad if the teacher’s a Stravagante,’ said Cesare, slurring his words a little.

  ‘We don’t talk about that in class,’ said Luciano uneasily. ‘It’s supposed to be a secret.’

  *

  In Giglia, Rinaldo di Chimici was having a conversation with his cousin that would have made Luciano even more uneasy if he’d known about it.

  Rinaldo had risen through the ranks of churchmen at a dizzying rate and was now a cardinal in Remora, where his old boss and family member Ferdinando, was Pope. But Grand Duke Fabrizio had sent for him and Rinaldo had obeyed instantly; he always wanted to please the head of their family, whoever it was.

  ‘The ruler of Padavia is stubborn,’ said Fabrizio. ‘He has recently refused to hand over the Bellezzan to me.’

  ‘The Cavaliere?’ asked Rinaldo. It seemed to him that wherever he went and whatever he did it was his fate to be involved with that black-haired boy.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Fabrizio. ‘The Cavaliere Luciano Crinamorte, who is so popular and well-known in Bellezza. Though no one had heard of him till a few years ago. The young man who was with my brother Falco, when he took the poison that killed him and who later killed my father.’

  ‘In a duel, cousin,’ said Rinaldo hesitantly.

  ‘In a duel, Eminence,’ agreed Fabrizio. ‘But whatever the rights and wrongs of that, you may know that my father, Grand Duke Niccolò, always believed that there was something suspicious in the way the Bellezzan befriended my brother and was present at his self-poisoning but then fled back to his city when Falco died.’

  ‘I do remember,’ said Rinaldo, wondering if he should tell his cousin now all he knew about Luciano and about how he used not to have a shadow. ‘I was always surprised that Nicc
olò – may his soul rest in peace – let him go free in Remora.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said Fabrizio, ‘Messer Antonio will not yield him up to my justice or even admit that he is in the city. But I have it on good intelligence that he has gone there to study.’

  Rinaldo spread his hands. ‘They have a fine university there, by all accounts.’

  ‘So I am trying another tack,’ continued the Grand Duke. ‘You are aware of my new laws against the occult?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rinaldo. ‘And as a churchman I very much approve.’

  ‘It is as a churchman that I want you to go to Padavia,’ said Fabrizio. ‘I have reason to believe that Messer Antonio will look more favourably on my next request, to put these laws on his own statute. And if that request comes from a cardinal of the Reman Church and my kinsman, I think he will agree. And then, when the Bellezzan steps out of line, as I’m sure he will, we will have him.’

  Matt’s driving instructor was a kindly, grandfatherly type, called Brian. He was impressed by how much Matt knew already.

  ‘My parents have been taking me out in Sainsbury’s car park for practice,’ he explained.

  ‘Well, you haven’t stalled or crashed the gears once,’ said Brian, ‘and that’s very good for a first lesson. I’d like you to look in the mirror more though. Spend just a second or two longer assessing the situation before you give the signal.’

  Story of my life, thought Matt. He still didn’t know what he was thinking of, telling Ayesha that he was going to apply to do a Computing degree at Cambridge. It was only a matter of time before she told his parents. He thrust the idea to the back of his mind. He had to hurry to fit in his homework before bedtime now that he was having driving lessons as well.

  He had to consider seriously whether or not to stravagate that night. He was already short of sleep and feeling knackered. But the strange things that were happening to him were becoming addictive. He still had no idea why he had been chosen to go there, why the talisman of the leather spell-book had chosen him, as Constantin put it, but he wanted to see Padavia again.

  He was a bit in awe of Constantin – and of Luciano too – but he felt that the city held the key to a secret that had eluded him all his life.

  Chapter 7

  Against the Law

  When Matt arrived in the studio, he was greeted heartily by Professor Constantin.

  ‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said, beaming. ‘We are going to start teaching you the craft of printing today.’

  Matt was surprised. ‘I thought that was just a cover story,’ he said.

  ‘Well, if it is to be effective, you must know what we do in the Scriptorium and learn how to do it yourself. The men are already suspicious because you aren’t related to any of them. There’s a tradition in printing that sons follow fathers into the trade. I’ve told them you’re an orphan and that your father was a printer in Bellezza. That’s why I’ve taken you on.’

  Great, thought Matt. They don’t want me here and they’ve only got to start asking me questions to find out that story’s full of holes. And as for spending all my time working with words . . . He remembered that the letters all had to be put together back to front and groaned.

  Constantin clapped him on the back. ‘Don’t look so worried. It will be fine. I’ll be teaching you myself when I’ve got the time. And you won’t start by setting type. That’s a very advanced skill. You’ll begin by sweeping the floor and making ink, that sort of thing.’

  So you read minds too, was Matt’s reaction. But he followed the Professor into the Scriptorium and looked at the room with a fresh eye now that he knew he really had to work there.

  There were five wooden presses, each one being operated by two men. They were all in action today, making the creaking sound that he had noticed before, which sounded a bit like an old sailing ship. Alongside each press, another man worked sitting on a high stool in front of a wooden case holding letters.

  ‘Those are the compositori,’ said Constantin. ‘They really do have to have a way with words.’

  Matt saw that they were working incredibly fast, rapidly picking metal letters out of the cases with their right hands and putting them into wooden sticks in their left. They were consulting sheets of paper, which were covered with loopy black handwriting – the original manuscripts he supposed.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Constantin under his breath. ‘They are the aristocracy of the print room. What the others do is hard work – some of it dirty – and it requires precision and skill. The pressmen don’t even need to be able to read. What they do is mechanical. The compositori have to be almost as learned as scholars.’

  Around the sides of the room sheets of printed paper hung from ropes, like lines of washing. Matt could tell that they were there to let the ink dry. And at the far end of the long room two more men sat at either end of a long wooden table, reading through more sheets and making corrections with quill pens. He could tell by their clothes that they were even higher in the pecking order than the men with the sticks.

  ‘My proofreaders,’ said Constantin. ‘They check the galleys for mistakes and if they find any, the compositore has to pick the wrong letters out of the forme and replace them.’

  ‘Are they all working on the same book?’ asked Matt.

  ‘Oh good heavens, no. We have a different book on each press.’

  ‘Five at a time? With all those loose sheets?’ said Matt. ‘Don’t they get in a muddle?’

  Constantin laughed. ‘Sometimes. But not often. And they are all experienced men. There is my foreman, Biagio, to keep an eye on everything. That’s him at the far end, with the curly moustache. And I am here myself as much time as I can spare every day.’

  ‘What about the Secret Scriptorium,’ whispered Matt, suddenly overwhelmed by how complicated the whole process seemed.

  ‘Only Biagio knows anything about it,’ said the Professor. ‘I work there at night and he helps me. But of course I need paper and ink and other materials so he would know if it went missing from the print room.’

  ‘Doesn’t it take three people to run a press? The two on the machine and the . . . the compositore?’

  ‘That’s where you come in.’

  *

  A carriage came rumbling across the cobbled streets of Padavia and pulled up outside an old house near the cathedral. The footman jumped down to help out a hearty-looking old man with white hair and hand down his luggage, and the passenger rapped on the front door.

  He was almost knocked over by a much younger man with curly black hair who was coming out at the same time.

  ‘Dottore!’ said the young man. ‘I didn’t expect you so soon.’

  ‘So I canne see,’ said the visitor, clasping the young man in an affectionate hug. ‘Ye seme to be fleeing awaye from me.’

  ‘I’m going to be late for a lecture, but it doesn’t matter. Not now you’re here. They won’t mind if I miss it.’

  ‘Ah, how soone have ye bicome a sluggard!’ said the old man but he smiled as he sent the footman round to the stables. ‘My sonne,’ he said proudly. ‘The young Cavaliere.’

  Doctor Dethridge’s servant knew perfectly well who Luciano was; it was only a matter of weeks since the Cavaliere had left their home in Bellezza. And everyone in the city who had any dealings with the court knew how fond the old scientist was of his foster-son. The boy had come to Bellezza a few years ago as apprentice to Rodolfo Rossi, who was now the Regent. The footman remembered now the rumours at the time that Luciano was a distant cousin of Rodolfo’s, from Padavia. So it made sense that he had come back here for his further studies.

  ‘Come in,’ said Luciano. ‘Have you breakfasted?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Dethridge. ‘Indifferently well, at an inn on the way. But it wolde please me to sit down with ye for more refreshment.’

  ‘I’ll call Alfredo,’ said Luciano. ‘It’s so good to see you! And how is Leonora?’

  ‘My wife is right welle, thank ye, son. She has sent manye
packages for ye, mayhap believing they have no vittles in this city.’

  They were soon making a second breakfast, with Alfredo’s cooking supplemented by Leonora’s food parcels. The old servant was inclined to be offended until he saw that she had put in her own jars of pickled vegetables and tomatoes under oil.

  ‘When are you giving your lecture?’ asked Luciano, as they sat in the garden drinking milky coffee.

  ‘The first one is tomorrow,’ said Dethridge. ‘Bot there sholde be six altogethire. Ye cannot describe the motion of the stars in shorter time.’

  It had been a problem for Luciano, ever since he had translated to live permanently in Talia, that he couldn’t reveal what his twenty-first century education had taught him about the physical world. He knew perfectly well that his foster-father would be lecturing on the way the sun and planets orbited the earth. Yet he could not share his own very scanty knowledge of the solar system with the Elizabethan.

  Talia was still in 1579; Luciano had no idea when their equivalent of Galileo would turn up or if they had already had a Copernicus but he had always known instinctively that he couldn’t just tell them that their view of the universe was wrong. He would have been hard-pressed to explain how it worked anyway.

  For most of the time he could just ignore this sort of thing; it was hard enough becoming a sixteenth-century knight instead of a twenty-first century school student. But now his foster-father was going to give a series of lectures at the university Luciano attended, which would actually be full of errors.

  ‘Ye are troubled by somme thinge?’ asked Dethridge, sensitive as always to Luciano’s mood.

  ‘Not really,’ said Luciano. ‘It doesn’t matter. But have you heard about the new Stravagante?’

  ‘Yonge Mattheus?’ said Dethridge. ‘He is anothire from youre school thatte is builded on my olde laboratorie, is he not?’

  ‘Barnsbury Comp, yes,’ said Luciano, feeling a sudden pang of homesickness for the ugly buildings he would probably never see again. ‘And you know who brought him?’